


Enough

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: Group Targets [22]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: Care-taking is fun. Maths is weird.





	

“Nyoom!” Q declares happily, waving his truck above his head. “Goin’ super fast!”

Eve pouts. “My truck can't do that,” she wails. “It's not faaair.”

James claps his chubby hands. “My truck’s the best.”

Eve turns to Gareth, lip wobbling. “Gaa-reeth! It's not fair!”

Gareth gains a slightly hunted look. He looks at the child clinging, koala-like, to his torso as if in search of inspiration. The child sucks his thumb and stares balefully back. No inspiration is forthcoming.

“Well, why can't your truck do that?” he asks pragmatically.

Eve considers this. “‘cause it’s a truck. Trucks can't fly.”

Gareth shrugs. “Q’s truck is just a truck.”

Q folds his arms and pouts. “Isn’t! It's a super mega truck.”

“So what's your truck, Eve?” Gareth says.

Eve thinks. “A super _super_ mega truck.”

“Mine's a super mega truck times a hundred,” James says.

“Times a thousand!” Q yells, holding both arms and the truck in the air.

“Times infinity!” Eve counters, triumphant.

Bill pats Gareth’s chest. “Can you do that?” he says, as James multiplies everything by a thousand plus one.

“Do what?” Gareth says, half an eye on the squabbling children on the rug in front of his armchair.

“Times trucks by a hundred,” Bill says seriously.

“Yes,” Gareth replies. “You'd just have a hundred trucks.”

Bill seems amazed. “A _hundred_?”

Gareth nods, smiling. “I've got a hundred trucks!” James interjects, before Q and Eve drag him back into the debate by claiming ever higher numbers of trucks.

“Could you have a hundred biscuits?” Bill says.

Gareth nods. “You can have hundred of lots of things, Bill.” Bill sticks his thumb back into his mouth to better consider this new information.

“Gareth,” James whines. “I'm hungry.”

Q rolls onto his back, clutching his small, chubby tummy. “Sooooo hungry,” he moans.

“Really?” Gareth says, raising his eyebrows. Eve nods frantically. Gareth stands up slowly, adjusting Bill onto his hip, and leads the children into the kitchen. They scramble up onto the barstools at the island, spinning and swinging and kicking each other.

With one hand, Gareth finds fruit boxes and cartons of ice as best as he can. He slides the blackcurrant juice boxes down the island and the kids grab them, ripping the straws out. Eve flails wildly with it, swordfighting with James and accidentally stabbing Q. He doesn't seem too bothered by it, and Gareth lets out a breath he hadn't thought he was holding.

Bill stares into his juice as if it holds the secrets of the universe. Gareth leaves him to it; he's clearly working through some stuff.

Q rips open his box of raisins, hurling them everywhere like a wizened-grape Vesuvius. Gareth winces, but the kids merely fall upon them like starving vultures, scrabbling about for the fruit.

Bill looks between one hand and the other, from his juice to his raisins. Gareth looks down at him in confusion. “Share nicely,” he says absently over his shoulder and Q begins the arduous task of evenly dividing, counting, re-dividing, and squabbling over the raisins.

Bill frowns up at Gareth.

Gareth bounces him on his hip. “You okay down there?”

Bill looks down at the items in his hands, and then back up at Gareth. “Can you times things by a thousand? And get a thousand?”

Gareth laughs and squeezes him affectionately. He looks over his kitchen, full of the detritus of other people's kids; shoes, books, bags and toys. He finds himself not really looking forward to the point, in half an hour’s time, when the parents would come to take the kids home. Gareth increasingly thinks of the kids he babysits as being, in some way, _his_ kids.

“James, have you done your maths yet?” he asks, and James shrinks under the table guiltily. “Go and get it out, then,” Gareth says sternly and the boy slopes off towards the door where all the bookbags were hastily thrown.

Q trots off after him. “Why haven't you done it yet?” he pesters.

Eve beams while the boys squabble. “I broke three toys today,” she says proudly.

“Wh- Why did you do that?” Gareth sighs.

Eve shrugs, still grinning. “Dunno.”

Bill pats Gareth’s chest. “Could you times _me_ by a thousand? What about Eve an’ Q an’ James?”

Gareth surveys the carnage that the boys have made of the bookbag pile. “You _could,_ ” he says slowly. “But let's not. One of you all is quite enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so tired.


End file.
